Sills Joining Board Of Her Old Rival, The Met Opera

By JOHN ROCKWELL

Published: May 9, 1991

Beverly Sills, whose career as a soprano and administrator has linked her name intimately with the New York City Opera for more than a generation, will join the board of that company's Lincoln Center competition, the Metropolitan Opera, as a managing director. She will be elected to the post at the annual meeting of the Metropolitan Opera Association next Thursday afternoon.

At the same time, Bruce Crawford, the former board president and general manager of the Metropolitan, will be re-elected president and chief executive officer. That move had long been expected, a formalization of the existing power structure at the Met, in which James Levine remains as artistic director and Joseph Volpe as general director, with Mr. Crawford above both of them in the institutional hierarchy.

Mr. Crawford confirmed yesterday that his and Miss Sills's names had been placed in nomination. Nominations are not contested, and it would be unprecedented for the entire 167-member association to reject a candidate.

Miss Sills's move to the Met board follows her resignation in October as president of the City Opera board, a post she assumed after a decade as general director. Her career as an opera administrator and board member parallels her singing career, in which she performed for years at the City Opera before moving over to the Met. No Plans to Plunge In

The soprano called her willingness to accept nomination to the Met board "a nonevent." She added that while she would help raise money for the Met, like any board member, she had no intention of plunging into such activity to the extent she was required to do with the City Opera.

Christopher Keene, who succeeded Miss Sills as the City Opera general director, said he felt no animosity toward her for her move across Lincoln Center Plaza, and wished her "happiness and satisfaction."

Miss Sills also sought to defuse any hint of bad feelings. "I had to withdraw totally from the City Opera in order to allow Christopher to put his imprimatur on the company," she said. "As long as I was president, this young man would come in with all these bright ideas and the board would look to me for approval. The same problem came up whenever he wanted to change anything, and they thought he was being critical of me. I did not take it that way. I picked this man."

Mr. Crawford has been de facto head of the board since his return to active leadership last May. He was first elected president in May 1984. At the end of 1985, as further indication of a longstanding tendency at the Met for board leaders to assume administrative functions, he became general manager. He left that post on April 1, 1989, to take control of the Omnicom Group, the fourth largest advertising agency in the world, a position he will retain.

For his first year at Omnicom, Mr. Crawford left the overseeing of the Met to others, although he kept his position as a managing director. With his reassertion of authority last year, he brought about the resignation of Hugh Southern as general manager, who was widely perceived within the company as inexperienced and passive, and the appointment of Mr. Volpe.

Mr. Volpe, who had risen through the ranks on the technical side after beginning his Met career as a carpenter's assistant, is considered a more workable ingredient in the delicate mixture of authority and ego that makes up the Met leadership, an energetic yet loyal intermediary between Mr. Crawford and Mr. Levine.

The names of Cynthia Wood, Paul M. Montrone and Frayda B. Lindemann have been put forth to become Met managing directors along with Miss Sills. In addition, Mrs. Gilbert W. Humphrey will retire as president to become honorary chairman, and Wilbur Daniels will succeed Mr. Crawford as head of the executive committee. Other officers will remain as before.

Photos: Beverly Sills will join the board of the Metropolitan Opera as a manging director. (John Sotomayor/The New York Times); Bruce Crawford is to be re-elected president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Opera. (The New York Times)